Thursday, June 17, 2010

A generation of women living blind to the future

It's not great when you know something foolish is happening but you have no power to influence it. That's the situation I found myself in when I was in my mid-20s, back in the early to mid 1990s.

At that time, the women I socialised with had decided to make marriage a low priority. It was something to be pushed off until some time in your 30s, even your late 30s. The 20s were thought to be the decade for an independent girl lifestyle, complete with ill-fated flings with the wrong sort of men (already there was pressure on men to "thug up").

At the time I thought these women were mad. They were giving a low priority to what was a key to their future happiness. They were putting last on the list something that ought to have been near the top. It was easy to predict that there would be many regrets later on.

And now here we are at the regret stage. My generation of women are now in their late 30s and early 40s. And they are creating a genre of confessional literature, one in which they describe their failure to form a family when they had a chance in their 20s.

It was all so predictable. Why couldn't intelligent, well-educated, middle-class women have known what was going to happen? Many seemed to believe that men would simply fall in with whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. And they were a bit surprised when that didn't happen.

And to be fair, that kind of magical thinking is not unusual in modern liberal society. I'm reminded of Kristor's comment that I've quoted previously:

Modern culture is a veritable hurricane of vicious cycles, all originating in a gnostic pretense: Let's pretend that there is no inherent nature of things, so that we may mess ad libitum with the family, sex, economics, and culture, with no ill consequences. Hey, Presto! Pass a law! Make it so!

Liberalism works best if there are no limits to things, if we can make things any which way we can. Because it's a convenient way for liberals to think, many do take this attitude, seeing it as a "hopeful" way to see the world.

But reality has a way of asserting itself. Let me take as an example the cases of Bibi Lynch and Rachael Lloyd, both quite attractive Englishwomen who have ended up single and childless.

I've had a ball and many passionate experiences, but nothing functional enough to constitute a long-term future and never anyone 'normal' enough to bring home to meet the parents.

It's not easy to meet men now she's in her late 30s:

I've found modern dating both disappointing and exhausting.

Trawl through any dating internet site and you'll find a host of men from all walks of life. But so many are either obsessed with sex, bitter divorcés laden with baggage or simply barking mad.

Although she puts a positive spin on being single, she admits:

I'm realistic. I've probably missed the boat as far as children are concerned, and that is a shame...

I can't help agreeing with Lisa Snowdon, who rues the fact that older men want to date only younger women. At 38, although I'm far from over the hill, I'm considered a woman of a certain age...

Yes, the life I have today is not quite the one I envisaged 20 years ago as a young woman. I foresaw a satisfying career along with 2.4 children and a handsome husband.

Then there is Bibi, now 44. She tells her story this way:

I am staring down the barrel of a lonely future without a man, let alone children.

And how do I find myself in this perilous position? One reason is undoubtedly that men like young women. Yes, I was young once and all that. In my 20s and 30s I wasn't exactly a supermodel, but I was constantly surrounded by men. The trouble is I wasn't necessarily looking to settle down back then...

Now that I am, there are very few available men out there and the ones there are would be more interested in my teenage nieces than in me...

Pity she didn't choose to settle down when she could have done so to her advantage. She's now having to compete with much younger women for male attention:

Please don't suggest internet dating. That crying date I had was through the internet. And I had to lie about my age even to get him to look at me. Any woman who has visited the hell that is internet dating will tell you she's had to knock at least five years off her age to be in the right 'bracket'.

Men are programmed to go for women they can have babies with and no matter what his age, he'll still have that subconscious desire...

The instant you meet someone, you give off hundreds of signals about yourself and those signals dictate if you're desirable or not to this new person. So if you're not giving off 'young' (equals fertile), you're going home alone.

I am not totally blaming men here. Like I said, this is hard-wired. And there's also (to a much lesser degree) the element of how we feel about ourselves as we get older. If I go to a bar and the place is packed with young women, I feel myself shrink. Not exactly appealing to the opposite sex.

Bibi has a lot of friends in exactly the same boat:

In my close circle of friends, there are eight of us who are single and childless. This is a generational phenomenon - we are all aged between 37 and 45.

When our mothers were that age, such numbers would be unimaginable.

Like many women writing this kind of literature, when she looks back she recognises the negative influence of feminism on her generation of women:

I think the feminist teachings of the Sixties and Seventies seeped into our brains. My mum couldn't be called a feminist, but I, too, grew up thinking we could be anything we wanted to be and have a fulfilling career, life and relationship.

We didn't delay marriage and motherhood deliberately, but felt there was more to contend with beforehand.

What we didn't realise was that men wouldn't be interested when we were ready. My generation was spoilt - unrealistic, even - and we wanted everything to be heightened and fabulous. And that has been our downfall.

What she is trying to say here is that feminism pushed marriage and motherhood down the list of priorities ("there was more to contend with beforehand"). She admits that she was led into the magical kind of thinking I described earlier in which there is nothing in reality to limit having things as you want them to be ("we didn't realise that men wouldn't be interested ... my generation was spoilt - unrealistic, even").

And so Bibi, who was "constantly surrounded" by men in her 20s, has ended up unhappily alone ("I feel I've moved from independent and vibrant to sad spinster.")

I know some men will respond "serve them right". But there are tens of thousands of these Western women who will never raise children now. It is to our common detriment that they were unable to form families.

And along the way they inflicted a whole lot of damage. They helped to demoralise the family guy culture amongst men, making it more difficult for the next generation of women, even those who were more traditionally minded.

And by wasting years of their own lives, they wasted years of the lives of many men.

110 comments:

It's a sad phenomenon, without doubt, yet one that looks to be fairly sturdy in generational terms. Very many young women today are similarly spending their 20s and early 30s having fun when they have their pick of men.

It really is just reflective of human nature unrestrained by social and religious mores. Strip those off, and you quickly see the face of the beast. In the case of young women, that often looks like using their sexual power to have fun when they can, and only "settling down" with more stable guys once their sexual power peak fades -- that's called "maximizing your leverage for self gratification". Men do much the same in this culture as well, of course, but have a different set of criteria on which they are judged and within which they operate -- and not quite the same time pressures as those relating to female fertility. But men are not operating in a way that is conducive to family formation either.

I think we are learning the hard way that unless social and religious mores exist to encourage people to form families at the "proper" time, many people will simply not do so, or if they do, will do so later, and have fewer kids (often less than replacement level). Europe has been experiencing this for decades now, and the US is now following suit as well.

The current culture is based on pursuing your own pleasure and fulfillment. For many people, including many young women and men, this is not defined to include taking on serious committed relationships or family responsibilities before age 35. That would be impinging on the "fun" of the period between 18 and 35. People do think that they can "catch up" later, and men can probably do that more easily than women can, but it isn't a great game plan for finding a great spouse.

I'm constantly astonished at the love wanted ads. The number of women outnumber men by as much as two to one. Even on singles sites, there are far more desperate women than men. As a very solvent man, own house, car etc, this is great. or a woman, it sucks. But they made their choices so I don't feel that sorry for them.

What a sad state of affairs. I'm twenty four and have been married for six years (do the math there ;)) making me one of the odd ducks of my generation. Watching friends from high school and college continuously make poor relationship choices when I know there are good guys in their social radar is becoming increasingly difficult. There's no benefit in trying to talk sense into most of them, even if they ask for advice. They're perfectly content to whine about the consequences of their dating choices and bemoan the fact that "no good men" exist.

Something tells me within the next five years their tone is going to change.

You know another sad thing? Those older men seeking younger women are poaching potential desirable mates from our generation, making it even more difficult for younger men to meet single women to start families with.

Mark,Thanks for hammering away on this important subject. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knows what you say is true. This post got me thinking about the women who succeed in finding a husband in their late thirties, many of whom seem to write a book about it, which should be a tip-off how rare this sort of success is. In any case, they seem generally to be successful, bringing money to the marriage, intelligent, bringing mental stimulation, and reasonably good looking for their age. These three traits don't guarantee a man, but a woman will have a very hard time without at least two of them. The harsh truth that no young woman is likely to face is that she probably won't make lots of money, probably isn't especially intelligent or interesting, and probably won't keep her figure and looks. So she should close the deal, so to speak, when sexual attraction is at its peak, and then work like hell to transform this attraction into real, binding, matrimonial love. The cultural norms and religious ideals that Novaseeker points to were, among other things, counterweights to this seemingly natural tendency to exaggerate our prospects.

Even worse are those women who married before 30 but then refused to have children. I know a few men who thought they were doing everything right, but ended up with wives who perpetually procrastinate when it comes to reproduction.

After the next promotion... after the next job transfer... after college degree... after the next vacation... always after. And then the woman is past 35 and infertile and the couple ends up childless, struggling to eke out one trophy child, or hanging out in fertility clinics.

Men need to start putting their foot down about that kind of thing. I even know a man whose childless wife got her tubes tied, despite his protests.

I know some men will respond "serve them right". But there are tens of thousands of these Western women who will never raise children now. It is to our common detriment that they were unable to form families.

No Mark, it's perhaps fortunate. Most of these harpies would never have been stable in a marriage and the poor shmuck that married them would have done so in the knowledge that the was their last available choice in real life. Their regret seems to be based on the fact that they cannot have children anymore and because of their fading beauty, cannot anymore ride "the alpha cock carousel" (crudely put I agree but true). Marriage for them is choice one makes when the other options have faded away.

The other thing that strikes me as quite interesting about these women is, why didn't they want to get married earlier? Really, they seemed to have wanted to live an endless party during their twenties, family formation seemed to be the thing one did when all other life experiences had been achieved. Raising a family was low priority for these women. I have strong suspicion that these women would have turned out to be terrible mothers and wives. Their singledom is probably for the best.

Feminism is only partially responsible for this phenomena, providing a justifying logic for a life of Hedonism, which is the real culprit. These women are profoundly selfish, hence bad marriage material.

That thought had never occurred to me Jonathan. And the older men have had time to build up material resources, career advancement and self-confidence and so have some advantages over younger men.

she should close the deal, so to speak, when sexual attraction is at its peak, and then work like hell to transform this attraction into real, binding, matrimonial love.

That's it. And it will help a lot if she gifts her husband many years of her youthful beauty and fertility rather than just the last few declining years of it. The husband, after all, will be working for her for decades to come.

Nice new background, though it does make the link column on the right a little difficult to read.

You are right, it is just that they don't have children and are ending up alone, but it is still sad.

That said with the prolific number of books being published by these women on this topic, the message does seem to be getting out. Well getting out to the girls that have good heads on their shoulders, like Hestia for example.

I'm 31 now and Hestia's prediction hasn't held true for my wife's friends yet. (With the exception of one that got married to someone completely unsuitable) they are still doing the same things.

Curiously though all of our male friends (who I would consider marriagable) have gotten married. Don't know if they'll stay that way, we've had 1 friend divorce.

I think the larger problem is that while women may be patriotic, they feel that it is demeaning if their only use is to create children. This is an issue my wife has long struggled with and while WE have delayed having children up to this year, it is something worth considering.

My apologies for how rambling this post is. I'm still trying to get a grip of the situation from a female point of view.

I don't think it's too late for these women to get married. I really don't. The blonde is hot...if she put effort into it she'd be married in a year.

You know...maybe it is more along the lines of these women are not used to working for what they have. Maybe everything has always just been 'handed' to them naturally. (they are pretty and pretty women do have it easy!)

My married friends are very annoying...cuz everything just slid into place for them. BUT...not all people are that lucky....sometimes you have to struggle and treat dating like a four year college degree. If they aren't willing to put the effort in then they will be single.

I was always taught to only date who I would consider marrying. This is a big deal that most parents don't discuss with their kids. All sorts of bad psychological things happen when you date people you have no intention of marrying. My friends always pressured me "date him for the experience" WHAT? WHAT? Ok...weird attitude...not mine....

Oh and one last thing....Older men who date younger women are not men you want to date anyways.

So this whole 'men want younger women' excuse is bullshit. Normal men want women in their age group give or take 4 years up or down.

Only weird men want excessively young women (past 6-7 years age difference).

Hey did anyone see that Warren Beatty's 18 year old daughter wants sex reassignment surgery to become a man and evidently the Beatties are devasted...Well that's what happens when you fill your children's heads with liberal rubbish.

Alte wrote: "Men need to start putting their foot down about that kind of thing. I even know a man whose childless wife got her tubes tied, despite his protests."

Men like this deserve the women they get. Sorry. But I hate these men more than the women they marry. Why? Because they have allowed this to happen. Men today make no demands. They acquiesce all the time. To everything. Especially if the demand comes from a woman. Until men start saying "No", they will continue to be trodden all over. As a matter of fact, most of our civilisational ills can be traced to the male abdication of the role of leadership and authority in society: example. If you have a weak heart or are easily offended, don't click the link. It is rather loud in parts.

Hmmm... Female Here wrote: "if she put effort into it she'd be married in a year."

What is it with women? They just don't get it. Reality vomits into their lap, and it doesn't give them pause - not even for a minute. This woman, who you think is "really hot" (WTF?) can't get married. Look sister, it doesn't matter what you think. What matters is what's happening. Your response is the typical attitude of modern women: no matter what life dishes up for you, no matter what evidence is presented that vitiates your world view, the trumping issue is what you "think" is the case, not what the case actually is. But since women don't really think so much as emote, their beliefs as to whether this aging, wrinkled, pre-menopausal harpy will find her mate are completely irrelevant at best, and dangerous at worst. It's obvious you're operating within the feminist mindset: why else would you compare dating to a college degree (instead of vice versa, or better still, instead of not comparing it to anything)?

Hmmm... Female Here wrote: "So this whole 'men want younger women' excuse is bullshit. Normal men want women in their age group give or take 4 years up or down."

Another opinion masquerading as reality. Men want younger women because (a) younger women are more malleable, eagre to please, and look up to the man for leadership, ie the entitlement bitch factor is smaller if managed well (b) they are prettier SURPRISE!!! (c) and therefore, their beauty will be enjoyed longer by the man SURPRISE!!!. QED, normal men will gravitate towards younger women. The younger the better (of course, all within the customary taboos of society and its law). Any woman who can't figure out at lease (b) and (c) by the time puberty sets in is living in a parallel universe, which is precisely where the mentality of modern woman resides.

Alte wrote: "Men need to start putting their foot down about that kind of thing. I even know a man whose childless wife got her tubes tied, despite his protests."

Men like this deserve the women they get. Sorry. But I hate these men more than the women they marry. Why? Because they have allowed this to happen. Men today make no demands. They acquiesce all the time. To everything. Especially if the demand comes from a woman. Until men start saying "No", they will continue to be trodden all over. As a matter of fact, most of our civilisational ills can be traced to the male abdication of the role of leadership and authority in society: example. If you have a weak heart or are easily offended, don't click the link. It is rather loud in parts.

Hmmm... Female Here wrote: "if she put effort into it she'd be married in a year."

What is it with women? They just don't get it. Reality vomits into their lap, and it doesn't give them pause - not even for a minute. This woman, who you think is "really hot" (WTF?) can't get married. Look sister, it doesn't matter what you think. What matters is what's happening. Your response is the typical attitude of modern women: no matter what life dishes up for you, no matter what evidence is presented that vitiates your world view, the trumping issue is what you "think" is the case, not what the case actually is. But since women don't really think so much as emote, their beliefs as to whether this aging, wrinkled, pre-menopausal harpy will find her mate are completely irrelevant at best, and dangerous at worst. It's obvious you're operating within the feminist mindset: why else would you compare dating to a college degree (instead of vice versa, or better still, instead of not comparing it to anything)?

Hmmm... Female Here wrote: "So this whole 'men want younger women' excuse is bullshit. Normal men want women in their age group give or take 4 years up or down."

Another opinion masquerading as reality. Men want younger women because (a) younger women are more malleable, eagre to please, and look up to the man for leadership, ie the entitlement bitch factor is smaller if managed well (b) they are prettier SURPRISE!!! (c) and therefore, their beauty will be enjoyed longer by the man SURPRISE!!!. QED, normal men will gravitate towards younger women. The younger the better (of course, all within the customary taboos of society and its law). Any woman who can't figure out at lease (b) and (c) by the time puberty sets in is living in a parallel universe, which is precisely where the mentality of modern woman resides.

When I read the snivellings of Bibi Lynch and Rachael Lloyd, I was haunted by a strange resemblance which I couldn't quite place. Of whom did the bellyachers in question remind me?

Then it hit me, all of a sudden. The bellyachers in question reminded me of those cynical Communist operatives during the Cold War, who made second and even more profitable careers out of purporting to be genuine anti-Communists of the "God that failed" type.

I say "purporting" because, with extremely rare exceptions such as the British ex-Communist Douglas Hyde, they never seemed to have the smallest complaints against Communism per se. They only started whingeing when Communist practices began to inconvenience them personally.

So with Bibi Lynch, Rachael Lloyd, and suchlike harridans, who appear to be as clueless now as they ever were about first moral principles without which a civilised society cannot exist. They want trash culture and the sexual revolution to continue ad infinitum, and their only current grievance against said revolution is that they can no longer automatically get their jollies thereby.

From one single anonymous to another single anonymous...I hear you sister!

It's a numbers game! We don't have the same social networks that we did back in the day (when mothers stayed at home when they got older it became their goal to throw parties and stuff to hook up their kids...it was a good system!)

Dating is bootcamp...you go through the numbers quickly whether you are a man or woman till you find the right one. It is a part time job.

The problem with the feminists was that they just expected everything to be handed to them. That if they waited till they were 34, while in the meantime getting a bunch of psychological baggage due to dating a bunch of sleezeballs, giving sex away to men they would never marry etc etc...that when they turned 34 *snaps fingers* Mr. Perfect would come.

That is the problem and that attitude of 'snapping fingers' and Prince Charming will be there is a very very big problem.

Also, women should not hand out sex to men so easily as it stuffs up men and their future relationships and causes miserable trouble. That is a very important thing to teach your daughters.

One thing about the undesirability of these women - it's not just their age, it's their proven propensity to put husband and children last in their list of priorities. I think for many men, these 37 year old Sex & the City types are much less desirable as marriage partners than would be a 37 year old widow, or even a 37 year old divorcee.

Something that doesn't get commented on much is the different culture among the white working class; WWC women are rarely 37 and childless. What I see a lot of though is WWC women become single mothers in their teens and early twenties, find they don't like it very much, and if they're lucky marry a decent bloke and have more kids with him in their ca mid-late twenties. That's what happened with a wwc friend of mine from school, he's married to and has a couple children with a women who already had two of her own. And a bit higher up the social scale my brother in law may be marrying a single mother with one child - she's a few years older than him but at least she's already shown she's interested in motherhood, not just in herself.

I guess I was lucky in that my wife is from small-town Southern USA where people think you're an old maid if you're married with children by 25, so she didn't have that "I can do it all later" thing.

Alte:"Even worse are those women who married before 30 but then refused to have children. I know a few men who thought they were doing everything right, but ended up with wives who perpetually procrastinate when it comes to reproduction.

After the next promotion... after the next job transfer... after college degree... after the next vacation... always after. And then the woman is past 35 and infertile and the couple ends up childless, struggling to eke out one trophy child, or hanging out in fertility clinics.

Men need to start putting their foot down about that kind of thing."

Yeah... this does rather fit my circumstance. >:-) Looking back on it, it would have been much better to have children soon after we married (mid 20s), rather than one child ten years later (mid 30s). And there was a couple years when I thought we were trying for kids, but apparently not really, I was informed later(!)

I think men need to be proactive here, and not simply assume you'll have kids at an appropriate time, or leave it entirely up to your wife. This goes for parents too - if it wasn't for my mother in law's nagging we might have left it even later.

For men, raising kids early in your career is tough, especially if you're expected to do half the childcare, but at least you hopefully still have youthful energy. And like Mark said a while ago, it's a high investment that pays back highly.

"Something that doesn't get commented on much is the different culture among the white working class; WWC women are rarely 37 and childless."

True. And, not coincidentally, the white working class has usually had better sense than to go down the now-mostly-catastrophic middle- and upper-class route of compulsory tertiary "education".

This was the case three-quarters of a century ago, as Orwell noted in The Road to Wigan Pier. He commented:

"Take the working-class attitude towards 'education'. How different it is from ours, and how immensely sounder! Working people often have a vague reverence for learning in others, but where 'education' touches their own lives they see through it and reject it by a healthy instinct. The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a 'job' should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merelycontemptible and unmanly. The idea of a great big boy of eighteen, who ought to be bringing a pound a week home to his parents, going to school in a ridiculous uniform and even being caned for not doing his lessons!"

I would go further and argue that any genuinely conservative movement should be making as one of its chief priorities an active admission that most current "university" "studies" are not merely a pernicious waste of time, but a dysgenic waste of time, laden as they usually are with egalitarian / Frankfurt School agitprop of the most deliberately malignant variety.

anon:"What about young women like me who want to get married but just can't seem to find anyone?"

I think it's a problem for women too.

One suggestion for finding decent men - get involved in some hobbies that mostly attract men, especially men of your age and slightly older. You'll meet a large number of men, many of whom are not the 'player' types you'd normally get hit on by at parties and such. Try something you find enjoyable for its own sake - hillwalking, Dungeons & Dragons, building mechanical war robots... sure you'll meet some troll-like entities, but you'll also meet a good choice of normal, approachable men.

You're spot on in regards to modern universities. A small anecdote from my first lecture at uni. It was a compulsory course for all first year arts, education .etc. students. The lecture subject was social darwinism and scientific racism, and I noticed about five minutes in that lecturer was getting red in the face and had an angry look about him. Then he said something along the lines of (paraphrasing) "they believed that there are biological differences between different races", and started yelling "IT’S CRAP, IT’S CRAP, IT’S CRAP". I loled.

Oh yeah, first post, sorry about being off topic. Thanks Mark for a unique Australian blog.

What about young women like me who want to get married but just can't seem to find anyone?

Move. I'm serious, and I speak from experience. There are areas in each country where women outnumber men (usually large cities and university towns), and others where men outnumber women (rural areas, or small cities). Move to one where men outnumber women. The men will be of higher quality, you'll have to practically fight them off, and the scarcity of women will make them more inclined to marry.

If the marriage market you are in sucks, move to a better market. If the men are expecting loose women and easy sex, it's because you live someplace with an abundance of loose women and easy sex.

He was a disrespectful cheater who thought he could get away with stuff because of my age.

Disrespectful cheaters are disrespectful cheaters, regardless of age differences. I dated a man 12 years my senior when I was 18 and he treated me decently, never cheated, and proposed marriage. My husband is over 6 years older than me, and most of the happiest marriages I know of have a similarly large age deferential.

Maybe you just have a habit of picking jerks. As if there weren't an abundance of 21 year-old jerks available to you. I'm sure a 20-something man would never be a disrespectful cheater, it most certainly was the age difference.

That is the problem and that attitude of 'snapping fingers'

No, the problem is that they are waiting so long to marry, not that Prince Charming doesn't appear when they are ready to start snapping. The woman's waiting is the problem -- and indicative of her true character -- not the fact that the waiting doesn't work out, Sister.

Yeah... this does rather fit my circumstance. >:-)

Those of many other men, as well. I know of 3 cases where the men were reduced to groveling for babies. Babies are supposed to be the goal of the deal, in the first place!

I'm a bit ticked off right now because a friend told me that her brother's best friend tried to kill himself by jumping out of a 4th story window. His wife had been delaying babies for over 12 years, and it finally occurred to him that she wasn't having his children because she didn't love him enough to want to do him that service.

He's alive, but he'll never walk again. She left him for someone else (of course), and now -- surprise, surprise -- is trying to get pregnant. With her dried-out, poisoned womb.

Nice. Such stories are piling up in my life, and wearing down on my patience with such women. And with the men who put up with their crap. Patience is only a virtue if it does not leave a leadership vacuum.

These women are not victims of their circumstances. They are perpetrators, and their collective actions are bringing down our entire civilization. We married women need to take a hard line with these sisters, because if we don't our daughters are going to suffer later.

Men will behave how they have to behave in order to get sex. If we tell them to act like cads in order to get it, then that is how they will act. If we tell them that they should act like strong, masculine, honorable men in order to get it, then that is how they will act.

Women, not men, are the ones that will turn this situation around. But that won't happen until we learn the power of shaming language and stop putting up with their selfish whining. Leave them to their cats, and concern ourselves with training the next generation to not be a bunch of self-absorbed sluts.

Ok so everyone really needs to watch MTV/VH1...me and my mother were watching this love relationship series where all these couples were trying to break up or get married. One woman just was a pathological liar and married her man and is not going to have his children. BUT the guy was very dumb in not being able to see through her. (Oddly enough the liberal VH1 host dude did not call her out....)

Men need to discuss how many children they want right from day 1. Dating for marriage not dating for dating! That's my personal theme.

Don't have sex with someone (marriage if your christian) until all deals have been hammered out and they are on the same page as you in every way when it comes to family, children etc etc.

We live in this supposedly open society where we can watch Lady Gaga have imaginary sex on tv....yet we can't discuss important things on the first date??? They say "don't talk religion politics on the first date" I totally disagree. I start right out the gate "here's who I am here's what i believe here are my dealbreakers...you either agree or not...if you disagree no harm done no worries"

This goes back to what Solzhenstyn and everyone says about our culture...no courage...even in dating...it's actually safer to avoid all these messy topics about values, goals and racism and Obama and instead feel close to someone by having sex.

You know....in my family....if I were to get married and have kids right now I have a weird feeling my parents would think I'm a loser.I know I would be endlessly insulted by certain family members. Hence why I plan on Moving Far Far Far away before I have kids.

The quicker we get rid of these liberal humanities---interpretive history type classes the better off.

Actually, the liberal arts are not that useless. Traditionalists need to be trained in them, because we're going to need our own set of intellectuals. Remember that the liberal arts are tools...how we use them is what will make them serve liberal or traditionalist causes.

(I'm a grad student in history, so I'm a bit biased, hehe)

I don't think so. Young men had no chance to begin with, because said women weren't going to give young men the time of day in the first place.

Yeah, because some are jerks and some of the good ones are attracted to the percieved maturity and economic provider capabilities of older men. If these older men are merely serving out a subconscious revenge fantasy, then this is a bad thing for us all around. It is a circle of destruction that must be stopped.

This poaching of the good women by older men may be a reason why some younger men are allowing themselves to be trapped by cougars. Sure, its like having a sugar mama who is appreciative (even sickeningly happy) that he's with her, but once you realize that she's likely to be a psycho with more issues than Time magazine, the detachment process is frightening.

On the question of "why can't I as a young woman find a nice man to marry", I think Alte has it basically right. Local markets are very different. Educated young women in particular tend to flock to the big cities. And that's to the advantage of the men who live there, really.

The way the sex/relationship market works in that setting (as it does also on most college campuses which also have lopsided sex ratios) is that the guys who are the ones women want (let's say the male equivalent of between high 7s and 10s, what we would call higher betas and up) hold all of the cards. Why is this? Because in a world where there are no longer any substantial social mores against casual sex, enough women will deploy casual sex in an effort to "woo" one of the relatively small number of higher dersirability men. This happens because men are more flexible sexually than women are -- in other words a male alpha will scale down as far as a female 6 if sex is on the menu, whereas a female 10 will almost never, *ever*, be found with the male equivalent of a 6 (straight-up beta), barring gold diggers and the like, which are a special case. Because these highly desirable guys will *sleep* with them, some of these 6 and 7 women think that they have a shot at "flipping" one of these guys into a loyal LTR. The likelihood of that is very low, as most of these guys are simply using these women for casual sex, but for a young woman who is just starting out to get the sexual attention of a very desirable man can be quite intoxicating. And it can be hard, especially for young women raised with no moral compass (but even for those who are raised with one ... lots of rebellion out there), to resist the urge to deploy sex in this way just to see if you can get the romance novel plot payoff of "flipping" the sexy, desirable cad into being your own personal, loyal sexy desirable LTR. That's the sum and substance of what is happening.

This has many, many adverse impacts. First, it messes up the whole market because it creates an expectation of casual sex among men and women alike. Those women (and men) who are not interested in casual sex can be easily frozen out of the mainstream market in the larger cities -- it really is just that simple. Second, it screws up the women who engage in this behavior, often -- not just in terms of increased risk of disease, but it screws up their expectations of what is "achievable" in a real "relationship" as opposed to "whom can I get to sleep with me". Many women realize this in a painful way when, time after time, Mr. Hunk whom they have great sex has no interest whatsoever in committing to them (he wants to keep his options open because, a rarity among men, he has many options). And when they realize this and begin to screen on the basis of stability and commitment, they're disappointed with the men who fit that bill, because they are often not Mr. Hunk. And they don't provide the "tingle" that these women have become accustomed to from sleeping with several Mr. Hunks. So what happens is that by allowing themselves to be sexually used by these guys, they have often, unfortunately, also ruined their own standards for being turned on and attracted, and can find it hard to be really attracted (in a way that doesn't feel like "settling") to the guys who bring the stability package to the table. It's kind of like guys who use porn a lot -- it skews their own beauty standards and expectations and makes the kind of girls who would date them less attractive to them. Well, spending your twenties sleeping with one exciting Mr. Hunk after another is becoming the female equivalent of porn in the sense of having the same skewing effect. And that is a *bad* thing for these women themselves as they go through the rest of their lives.

The current system in the bigger cities really only benefits two kinds of people: male players and female "loose women". There have always been both types. In the past, the latter were pilloried for being inclined to promiscuity, whereas today they are not. These are the kinds of women who naturally do not do monogamy well at all, and really feel hemmed in by the idea of monogamy. They are a small minority of women, but they are living the life of riley today, because they can be as sexually provocative as they wish, have sex as much as they wish without much social penalty, and pretty much live the way they want to under the current system. And the same thing holds for the male players, yet these guys have always done well, regardless of the system. It doesn't work very well for virtually *everyone* else. And it certainly works extremely poorly at matching people together who may be good as potential mates.

Fortifying post and comments. I especially agree with Kilroy's comment that men need to learn to say "No".

Real life example: if the husband works a full time job plus another job on the side to make ends meet and his wife works part time, it is not a terrible thing for him to insist that she do certain household chores. Period.

Is this what unmarried women are afraid of? Domesticity? Compliant cooperation? I think such women form the larger part of those who complain about everything male in society and wonder why they end up childless and without a husband.

Mark, your new look is inviting but seems to me decidedly a-geographical. May I humbly suggest a profile of your imposing (to 100m tall) sentinel, the Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans):

Jonathan Wolfe notes: "Actually, the liberal arts are not that useless. Traditionalists need to be trained in them, because we're going to need our own set of intellectuals."

I don't think anyone's objecting to the liberal arts as such. Certainly I'm not. What I do object to is the notion that they can be seriously taught inside those scummy taxpayer-funded, feminism-infested, anti-white broiler-houses now known as Australian "universities".

I think you're right in your comment about a certain type of woman being spoiled for relationships.

I noticed myself that the two women I wrote about in the post are what you might call "attractive but flawed" in their looks.

They must have both been attractive enough in their 20s to have been worth an "alpha" player type having casual sex with. But neither of them have the model type looks that an "alpha" type might eventually commit to.

In the past, prior to the sexual revolution, "alpha" males would have committed to marriage much earlier in life. They would have married their model type girlfriends in their early 20s, thereby leaving the dating market.

This would have left the Bibis and Rachaels with the decent "beta" type provider men. This would have made such men happy enough as the Bibis and Rachaels, though they might not have model good looks, nonetheless are your attractive girl next door types.

But after the sexual revolution, the alpha men continued to date throughout their 20s. They might well occasionally choose a Rachael and a Bibi for a casual fling. But then, at some time in their 30s, the alpha type men would discard the women of their own age and marry a much younger model type woman.

And so the Rachael and Bibis start complaining at some point in their early 30s they no longer get attention from men, that they are now competing with much younger women, and that the men left to them are of a lower quality.

The upshot of all this is that the real losers of the sexual revolution are not the alpha type males, who still end up with an attractive younger wife, nor the women with model type looks, who at worst have a somewhat older husband than previously, nor even the least physically attractive women, who aren't encouraged the wrong way by the alphas.

The biggest losers are the "attractive but flawed" women like Rachael and Bibi who get enough attention from the players but who aren't likely to get a commitment from them, plus the "decent beta" type men who would once have been the husband material these women looked for.

I'm currently reading the Feminine Mystique by Friedan (Oh yes I read widely) and am interested by her critique of women in the 50's and 60's. Her view, which is based on presented articles and themes in women's magazines in the 50's-60's, is that women adopted a very strong home and family focus in the post war period. There was no interest in political issues, careers's, pushes for independence and that this was counter to pre war women’s magazine articles which strongly pushed concepts of the value of independence and careers. The point made was that with the granting of political rights women turned away from the public sphere to fully embrace the family and home. (The book then raises the feminist critique that many of these housewives were not in fact happy).

This argument indicates that issues may move in phases and swings and not in direct continuums, as there were noticeable shift in pre war and post war ideas of feminine happiness.

Many of today's woman may value the taking of flying or skydiving lessons, the definition of the self in the absence of man or family, the commitment to action in the public sphere and career over family and home, and the rejection of a subordinate or dependant status. However, the same thing could be said of Amelia Earhart at the end of the C19th.

What is the issue here? That women in pursuit of ambitions are abandoning their role in the continuance of society? Or that they're unhappy in their current, or socially proscribed choices?

If its the latter than the movement away from a one size fits all role in society will be beneficial. Not all women should be required to stay at home full time. Not all women should be required to go to work full time.

I wish it were just a case of letting women decide - as I think most women would opt for something like a traditional role.

But I'm afraid that's not it. The liberal pseudo-religion states that:

a) women must be made independent of men

and

b) gender must be made not to matter

Combine both of these beliefs and you inevitably arrive at a Scandinavian type social arrangement in which men and women are pushed toward a single undifferentiated unisex parental role which is itself strongly subordinate to career and state welfare.

The biggest losers are the "attractive but flawed" women like Rachael and Bibi who get enough attention from the players but who aren't likely to get a commitment from them, plus the "decent beta" type men who would once have been the husband material these women looked for.

Mark --

I think this is exactly right. It's the women in the 5-7 range (from cute to girl next door to quite pretty girl next door) who are the ones who are feeling like they are "winning" in the 20s when they can get Mr. Hunk to sleep with them (in the hopes of getting him to commit ... I think many think that "eventually *one* of these guys will commit, after all most of them find me attractive, right?") to the more wistful sense of having "lost" once they reach the later 30s, and they realize what actually was happening in their 20s -- or at least some of them do. Many of them just bemoan the lack of men at their age in a fairly unreflective way as well, which is convenient because it externalizes the problem and prevents them from being reflective about their own pasts.

For the guys in the same range, the impact is different. Many of these guys are frozen out of, or have a really really hard time, getting dates with women of their own "level", precisely because a good number (not all, but a good number) of their "peer value" women are "dating and sleeping up" -- leaving fewer women who are their peers and who are interested in dating a male of peer value. This also has the effect of increasing the competition for the remaining peer value women who are not sleeping "up". So these guys also must reach down a bit if they want to more easily find dates. The issue there is not that guys won't do this, but that there is a "floor" for these guys as there is for women as well. The male equivalent of a 7, say, may be willing to date a cute 5, but that's about as far down as he's willing to go, being a male 7. This is why a good number of these guys end up in Guyland and Warcraft and so on in the 20s -- there's a lack of peer value women because the women are dating/sleeping up and the ones who aren't are in high demand leading to hellish competition and a complete imbalance in dating power, coupled with a "floor" on how low the guys are willing to date "down", in terms of objective attractiveness.

So it adversely impacts men and women in different ways. I think it hurts women more, though, because it's harder for them to "catch up" later on. For the guys, if they can manage to hang on without getting too cynical into their early to mid 30s, a lot more opportunities open up. For women, it's kind of the reverse story: lots of opportunities in the 20s (which in quite a few cases are seemingly being squandered) followed by fewer opportunities later.

If its the latter than the movement away from a one size fits all role in society will be beneficial. Not all women should be required to stay at home full time. Not all women should be required to go to work full time.

This sounds well, but as Mark points out, in order to get there, you have to eliminate all sex roles. Why is that? Because unless you do that, there will be "pressure" on women to "conform" to certain roles "expected" of women. This is why so much time and energy is expended by the left and by feminists to "deconstruct gender and gender roles" -- the idea is that as long as "fixed concepts of gender" and "gender roles" exist, severe limitations on personal freedom will be implied by these. They *say* that this restricts the freedom of men and women alike, but in reality it's more the women who want to do the things that men do than vice versa -- it really is more of a one-way street. In order to get men to embrace the female role you need to basically force them to do it -- either by mass indoctrination, legal requirements and the like. Sweden is an example of a society that has full bore attacked "gender" through an aggressive combination of mandatory legislation and comprehensive cultural and educational brainwashing. And even there, there are *many* dissenting men.

I don't think anyone in particular thinks that if a woman wants to be a skydiver she should be forbidden from doing so. Amelia Earhart didn't just drop out of the sky, and I don't think she was put in prison for flying a plane. I think that the feminist movement, however, believes that there won't be more Amelia Earharts until gender roles are destroyed, because gender roles are preventing women from even wanting to "be" another Amelia Earhart. In other words, the idea is that because girls are supposedly programmed from infancy to gravitate towards nurturing and children, they aren't even given the opportunity, in an interior sense, of wanting to be like Amelia Earhart -- they are being subtly programmed to be "women". So in order to prevent this from happening, society needs to radically eliminate all sex roles and just make every individual life a complete 100% "jump ball". The larger repercussions of this be damned -- and when they do come along, we deny, obfucsate, produce self-serving "studies" to muddy the waters and so on.

It all goes back to the blank slate idea -- namely that there aren't really any differences between men and women that are not programmed by culture and society. That's the core belief underlying the programme to delete all gender roles -- because if they are programmed, and that programming reduces personal autonomy (the god of this age), then they are bad and must be eliminated. The blank slate is basically wrong, however. There are plenty of fundamental differences between men and women. That doesn't mean that there are no women with the ambitions of an Amelia Earhart, but it means that they are not all that common -- even today, 50 years into full blown female liberation. And all of that oppressive programming itself didn't prevent Amelia from doing her thing anyway.

I agree with your assessment about the significance of cultural pressure but there is more than merely discussing what is good for women at issue here. There is also a strong underlying desire to promote the subordination of women. This idea if raised not by you is in some of the comments. If women see the home as their "naturally subordinate" position then they won't be that keen to embrace it even if they are unhappy with popular notions of femininity.

One thing we do know is that most women, especially young women, don't embrace the term feminist. This situation is frequently lamented by older feminists. The term feminist brings to their mind concepts of man hating, institutional subordination and gender determinism that many women want no part of or refute.

There is a danger is singling out women excessively in discussing problems of relationships and childrearing. The point that we must be aware of where our actions will lead us, male or female, is very important and necessary, however, serious solutions to relationship issues will require more than just criticisms of career, or sex in the city, women.

I agree that the refutation of gender roles is used by the left in their arguments. However, as every stay at home mum knows, the left don't refute all gender roles they only refute traditional gender roles. A women is not legitimately given the choice in intellectual circles to be a stay at home mum. If she does so she is accused of selling out to traditional pressure or being lacking in ambition.

The left in practice don't actually have "no gender roles" as their motto. They have women as bright independent career women, as their gender role for women. So its a frog march for women into the workforce. This is a one size fits all approach and "no gender roles" is only used as a justifying premise.

I'm not at all sure what conceivable use (except in the most limited "know your enemy" sense) any attempt to read "Betty Friedan" (a.k.a. Betty Goldstein) might have, given that she was - as was widely appreciated even in her lifetime, though almost never admitted - an absolutely unapologetic Stalinist, and, ex officio, committed to mendacity as a first principle. Even the left-wing Salon magazine has conceded as much:

"Combine both of these beliefs and you inevitably arrive at a Scandinavian type social arrangement in which men and women are pushed toward a single undifferentiated unisex parental role which is itself strongly subordinate to career and state welfare."

Yes, and the lesson here I think is that the liberal state in its never-satiated modern progressivism is perhaps the chief villain in this area. The sorting would be vastly different from what it is today if government were not exerting so much influence on men, women and families. There can be little doubt that traditionalism would flourish in relative terms were it not for institutionalized notions of progress.

The destructive effects of state power are not ineluctable, though it looks that way now.

I understand where you're coming from and I agree with the 'anti-women' theme that runs through many of these comments. I also agree with Reeves that Betty Goldstein , the communist, is specifically programmed to warp people's minds (this is why blue collar people have more common sense than upper class people...blue collars don't read b.s. but then upper class people get all open-minded and start reading and theorizing.)

The problem is not women in the workforce, and the problem is not women staying home....The problem is The Birthrate.

Let's use hot sexy doctors as an example. It has been proven that approximately 50% of IQ is inherited, 50% of IQ is environmental. Of the inherited IQ 37% comes from the man, and only 13% comes from the woman. Furthermore it has been proven that younger men with younger sperm have higher IQ children than older men, and Older woman have higher IQ children. Possible reasons may be---older woman are more experienced and give better 'nurture' to their child, or older woman tend to be the upper-class working types who have children later. Both prove my point.

So your a hot sexy doctor named Vladimir with an IQ of 135...and you have a choice...marry another female doctor or marry the girl at church who is proud to be a mother.

Currently, the trend is for doctors to marry doctors and have 1 kid on average (at least from what I've seen.) Now if that same doctor had married the church girl he would have had 2-3 or even more children (Think Ron Paul or Rand Paul)

So...in the era of society where women are told that motherhood and accomplishment are valued...we get 1 child per high IQ male....whereas in a society where women are 'gasp' steered towards motherhood we get 2-5 children with high IQ's.

Furthermore, let's be completely honest. The most intelligent women on the planet will always be successful. Hey I was looking at the silver vault London and one of the most prized collector pieces is from a 17th century woman silversmiths (of which there were many great ones!) The Amelia Earharts, Ada Lovelaces...these types of women Always pursue career.

But now with our current 'work or home' model.....the 110-120 IQ women like Bibi and hot blondie, smart enough to go to school and have a good career...but frankly not intelligent enough to distinguish themselves on a historical level (but with plenty of ego).....These women are no longer bearing that many children to their high IQ doctor menfolk.

Thus we have a brain drain and massive birthrate problem. Whites were 30% of the world population and now we will soon be less than 8%.

This is dangerous and this is the problem. Couple this with 2 salary households and Wage Erosion/Stagflation and we got a massive problem.

Personally, I agree with you...if it wasn't for massive non-white immigration this would probably be just a phase...but now it is a mortal phase.

Also by giving in to Betty Friedan's 'dual' model system (as you evidently have...sorry mate)....you have no choice but to argue that men and women are equal. You see how that happened?

Also by giving in to Betty Friedan's 'dual' model system (as you evidently have...sorry mate)....you have no choice but to argue that men and women are equal. You see how that happened?

So if women can choose either career or motherhood...you are giving equal weight to both options. Which implies that you believe women to be equal to men.

But in reality, women are not equal to men...we women have a time clock.....Therefore, a society based upon the Constraints of Biology would place a greater 'Pride' on motherhood.Thus nullifying the dual-system model.

I think if you are really honest with yourself and look at the women in your life...would it be better for them to have had the career or have another 2 kids. Which would have benefited society more?

I contend that most of these women are not distinguished enough in their career to warrant the high-IQ child loss to society.

And just an aside...do you have an idea what it's like to feel your clock ticking and have a family that expects you to invent warp drive?? It's awful! There's not enough TIME! Thank you.

You know if I'm truly truly honest with myself....I'm not adventurous enough to be Amelia Earheart, I'm not pretty enough to be Julia Roberts, I don't have a dirty enough mind to write Joan Collins or Nora Roberts, and I'm to emotional to become Captain Picard of the Enterprise.

But...I realize that if I had kids....looking at my family history, genetics, and IQ....there's a REALLY good chance that one of my children could actually do something better than I ever could do. The more kids I have...the higher that probability becomes.

Do you see? Mediocre Higher-IQ women would probably be better off having more children than pursuing the career.

At my old job none of the female EE's had children. All that IQ and talent is gone now. And they were just writing Perl Script so it's not like they were writing the great American novel....

I agree with your point about the birthrate but I think its more than that. If the birthrate was the only issue at hand options to get around that, such as paid maternity leave, would be seriously discussed. Paid maternity leave would certainly improve the birth rate. It wouldn't improve it to level that stay at home mum's would achieve, but it would improve it. This however is not considered as an option. Indeed it is considered as the enemy. Why? Because paid maternity leave would further empower women.

If we look at views about the relationship between men in the 50's and 60's the argument at that time would have been that women and men are equal but different. Women have their spheres are roles and men have theirs, both are as important as the other and equally vital. Whether this was believed or not is another matter but that is what would have been generally stated and understood. Now it is casually stated by you that women aren't equal but are inferior. Are women seriously expected to sign up for this?

The reason why lefties are so keen to push women into the workforce is because they know that that's were the power is. If you can fill the professions, occupations, and societal roles with "your" people, not to mention fill their bank accounts, you will influence society accordingly. You leave women at home asking for an increase in their allowance from their man every time they want to buy something and they'll always be subordinate and a non-left or male/conservative society will dominate.

The view that essentially women are crap and have to be kept on a leash, however, only perpetuates the left wing notion that conservatives are women haters who should be shunned by women.

You can deal with the social reality as it stands now and accept that women, for all their apprehension and possible unhappiness in following a career and fun path, are still not likely to want to become second class citizens. Or you can attempt to push pack the clock and say, as was mentioned recently by a commenter, that men should marry 12 year olds. You can hardly expect success attempting the latter approach.

I said that there has always been an 'uppercrust' of incredibly high IQ women who have throughout the centuries always contributed to society.

My great grandmother was a nurse then quit to raise children. Then she became a private investor while raising her children (and her husband died too in a tragic accident).

My grandmother had an egg business and saved all her money and bought her dream house.

My other grandmother did get an allowance but my grandfather gave her everything she wanted annnd she had a rare form of cancer and died at a young age sooo working at a shop or starting a side business was not an option.

Maybe a Hollywood Writer who was writing I Love Lucy who saw my grandfather hand my mortally ill grandmother an allowance thought it was wrong...but I have no problem with it.

It almost seems Jesse that your concept of Men and Female relationships is coming from 1950's and 1960's Hollywood Stereotypes.

So the Hollywood Writers write it and now it is the gospel of what our society was like?

Because Ricky handed Lucy the allowance that is how all American families operated in the 50's and 60s?

You admitted it yourself in your post...Lefties want women in the workforce because women inherently through biology gravitate to the political left.

I agree with that.

I did not say women were inferior. Many men are just drones at work..but we women...have the ability to raise and give birth to kids. I can listen to a baby scream for hours and not lose my temper, whereas my male neighbhor couldn't handle it. Women do have gifts and those gifts have to do with children. Why should women be mindless cubicle drones when God gave us a natural gift that actually does more good for society than writing Perl Script? That's my message to women.

The only reason why my message sounds 'inferior' to modern day ears...is because our society is all based around 'career goals' climbing the ladder 'making a difference'. I say the difference starts with the family.

The point I'm trying to make is that none of the women in my family were second class citizens.

This idea that women were second class citizens comes from HOLLYWOOD.

It does not come from my family history. Google Laura Jean Libbey.

Therefore, I feel like basing arguments on Hollywood or even some assinine OzCon commentators who can't get laid is not right.

We can all rewrite history.

Revolutionary Road with Kate Winslett and Leonardo DiCaprio did a great job of rewriting 1950's history.

And yes women were discouraged from entering certain careers. That is true. My family members tell me all the time "oh my dad said I shouldn't become a mechanical engineer."

Well guess what Jesse...now there are a lot of female Engineers and the vast majority of them are just cubicle drones---and Childless, single, unmarried and unhappy...because that deep biological imperative is still in them yet unfulfilled.

My argument still stands intact.

Women should not be discouraged from pursuing career like in the past...but the priority should be on Motherhood. That is what I believe. A woman's PRIORITY should be motherhood. If that insults some women...so be it....but based on biology and what is good for society that is it.

Before affirmative action there was one black dude at Harvard Law(someone help here with the name) and he was OUTSTANDING. Because the system was meritocratic so only the best got in.

In the past, motherhood was the priority....and yes....women were discouraged from certain careers but looking at Amelia and the famous female writers and silversmiths and Marie Curry...The Cream of the Crop got through and ended up creating things that were amazing and are still inspiring the modern generations. It was in essense a way to seperate the 'average higher-IQ women' from the 'truly phenomenal women.'

I see your point Jesse...your saying you can't talk like this to the modern day woman. I agree with this.

Well the modern day woman is basically an egotistical ass much similar to her male counterparts.

But see the difference is ...I have no desire to convert every woman in the world to my viewpoint. I'm not out to debate leftism and turn back the clock. I don't want to change woman's minds.

I'm out to find people who think like me, agree with my point of view, and together without any of the others who disagree we will re-create a better society.

I can't drag all the women into my viewpoints. So I don't try. I put my ideas out there and I join up with the other women who agree with me. I try to convert no one.

The women who subscribe to modern day liberalism will go extinct. The women who join me and my ideas will not.

That is why I have no desire to convert or debate. I just want to find 'my own' and build the numbers from there.

Liberalism is like religion. You can't debate and convert people. People will either be like me and realize it is crap and move to the other side or not.

The only thing to do to counteract Liberalism is to set up parallel society that is more successful. Eventually that society will win out. (we call this society christianity...and we don't have to make women second class citizens or tell girls they can't be mechanical engineers)

One more thing...Feminism has set women up as the victim. My grandfather told my mother "You shouldn't become a mechanical engineer" and to this day my mom rants and raves about how my grandfather told her that a woman can't become an engineer. And me and my dad both ask her "But didn't your dad hate his job and was unhappy and always worried about losing it?" and my mom's like "well yes..." and then we're like "Maybe that is why he discouraged you from the field?? Is because he knew you would be unhappy in it" But raised on female victim feminist methodology of the 'evil man' putting down the 'unintilligent woman' my mom does not interpret my grandfathers advice as loving advice.

I'm sure had my mom built model bridges with toothpicks for fun four several hours a day my grandfather would have said "u should be an architect" but she never did that so....

I just asked my dad who grew up in Ohio in the 40s/50s..."Hey dad was Oma treated badly in the 1950s because she was a woman" and my dad's like "Hell no she wouldn't take no shit out of nobody" and then he said (and is still saying) "Other women tried to put her out of business and they all failed"

Ok I'm so sorry for posting but I have so much to say! So I watch New York Housewives on Bravo all the time and I love it! Great show.

Ramona Singer is awesome. She owns her own business and has one daughter. She tells the story about how her father beat her mother but because her mother was financially reliant on the father the mother never left. Ramona then swore that she would never be financially reliant upon a man.

So Ramona met Mario her husband when she was 34 and Mario had his own business (family jewelry company) and they got married. Now get this....MARIO..MARIO the man...inspired Ramona to start her own business and now she only works half the day and in her own words "Making my own money is the best aphrodesiac"

But I think it's funny cuz it was Mario who rescued her out of the childless marriageless cubicle job and Ramona was a wild sleeping around drinking 20 something. Ramona got VERY lucky with Mario.

Do you all see the irony? Here is Ramona the money-making 'feminist' who was only able to start her business (the idea was Mario's) cuz of the love and support of her HUSBAND.

Ok so history is interpretive. People like Betty Goldstein (and Hollywood writers) interpret history and rewrite history with a 'spin' that fits their agenda.

Fact:Florence Nightingale was an upperclass woman. She had a religious calling to become a nurse. Her family (her dad) did not want her to pursue a career as a nurse.

Spin:

Ok so I'm Betty Goldstein and I have an agenda...so I retell the story like this...."Florence Nightingales father forbid her to become a nurse and said I would disown you child! Your place is in the home raising children!"

Now I'm Anonymous on OzCon with a Christian Background "Florence Nightingales father wanted to see his daughter happily married and have children. He dreamed of having little grandchildren running around the mansion and hoped that she would marry a nice man so that when he died he would know that his daughter was well loved in his absence. But when he realized that his daughter had a religious calling he gave her a 500 pound stipend a week so she could pursue his career. All because he loved her" (he did...he gave her an allowance so she could pursue nursing)

This why reading people like Betty Goldstein and watching Hollywood movies is bad (look how it affected my mom and her father!)

anyways i've totally lost the point of everything but I hope you read stuff anyways

Well randian my point was that because of the Feminist Doctrine Ramona does not admit that is was Mario, the man, who rescued her. She also does not admit that women and men in a healthy relationship complement each other by supporting each other in their family and business affairs. My grandfather supported my grandmothers egg business. My great-grandfather supported my great-grandmothers investment strategies (until he died.)

Feminists turn this whole 'mutual cooperation' thing on their head. They deny it existed in the past, they rewrite history and spew out Women are the victim and should make 100% choices free of men Yadda Yadda Yadda

This also has the effect of increasing the competition for the remaining peer value women who are not sleeping "up".

I hadn't thought about that, but I think it's true. Hestia and I were discussing this, and we both had multiple proposals from highly eligible men. Most of the other women that I know of, who married young, also had multiple suitors.

If a woman in the 5-7 range (or higher) selects for good marriage material, and lives in an advantageous market, she'll be spoiled for choice. It really is like that. I suppose we're the women marrying the older or "less sexy" guys that the alpha-chasing women had passed over.

This argument indicates that issues may move in phases and swings and not in direct continuums

This is true, but birth control, social welfare programs, and easy abortions have changed the magnitude of the effect.

Paid maternity leave would certainly improve the birth rate.

No it wouldn't. Most European countries have this, and their birth rate continues to decline. America has the highest birthrate among Western nations, and no government-paid maternity leave. It has never increased the birth rate, but it usually provides a slight jump, as women who were delaying have their children a bit earlier. That is all.

are still not likely to want to become second class citizens.

I think the more interesting question is: Does it matter what those women want? As the social welfare states go bankrupt, the child support and alimony checks dry up (because the men are out of work or disappeared), and the crime rate goes up... women will increasingly need to marry, whether or not they truly want to. What women are living now is a state-supported fantasy life. Of course they want that, but men are no longer willing and increasingly unable to pay the taxes necessary to provide them with what they want. And that's what matters.

Because Ricky handed Lucy the allowance that is how all American families operated in the 50's and 60s?

Laura Grace has unearthed quite a bit of evidence that it was, in fact, the husband who received an allowance from his wife. One of the wife's responsibilities was budgeting and managing the household's money. This was common even back to the Victorian Age, or earlier. Remember, it wasn't always just the husband's paycheck that they were living off of. For instance, my grandmother raised and sold rabbits and jams as a side business.

This was also common where my grandmother lived, in postwar Germany. It's true that the men usually drank away part of their income, on Friday night. But that was because they knew that they would have to hand the rest over to their wives when they got home, and would be kept on an allowance for the rest of the week. After all, the wife bought the sewing materials, the food, the housewares, etc. The husband never went shopping at all, because he had to work such incredibly long hours.

A woman's PRIORITY should be motherhood.

I agree. I'm also an engineer by training, and I've put that all on hold to stay home with my children. Next fall I start working part-time again (my youngest is 3), and if it doesn't work out, then I shall quit and go back to full-time homemaking. Motherhood and family are my vocation. Everything else is just a job.

Feminists turn this whole 'mutual cooperation' thing on their head.

Yeah, I know. What they don't take into account is that in a marriage all of the wealth accumulated goes to both people. So a husband whose wife runs a successful side-business, or who brings in a bit of extra cash, or who is particularly thrifty with their income (all of which hints at an adequate education or training), has more money to spend on his family than one who doesn't.

"You can deal with the social reality as it stands now and accept that women, for all their apprehension and possible unhappiness in following a career and fun path, are still not likely to want to become second class citizens. Or you can attempt to push pack the clock and say, as was mentioned recently by a commenter, that men should marry 12 year olds. You can hardly expect success attempting the latter approach."

So basically any woman who stays at home and raises children is a second class citizen?

So Betty Friedan has defined a woman's role in the home as being second class and you have just eaten it up lock stock and barrel?

So if I, The Anonymous, write a book and define anyone who works in a cubicle as a second class citizen....will you suddenly jump on my bandwagon?

We're playing with definitions of success here. In the past, motherhood in itself and raising kids was considered being successful.

But now, with the advent of people reading Betty Friedan, motherhood is defined as being second class citizen.

That's what that paragraph means. So the liberals stole the definition of success for women and made us feel worthless for just being mothers and now we're losers if we aren't 100% independent from our husbands. Got it. Great.

Well that is not my definition of success. Those who choose that definition of success...full and utter autonomy from personal and biological constraints...God Help Them.

You leave women at home asking for an increase in their allowance from their man every time they want to buy something and they'll always be subordinate and a non-left or male/conservative society will dominate.

The view that essentially women are crap and have to be kept on a leash, however, only perpetuates the left wing notion that conservatives are women haters who should be shunned by women.

You can deal with the social reality as it stands now and accept that women, for all their apprehension and possible unhappiness in following a career and fun path, are still not likely to want to become second class citizens. Or you can attempt to push pack the clock and say, as was mentioned recently by a commenter, that men should marry 12 year olds. You can hardly expect success attempting the latter approach.

This is similar to the modernist view in which life is thought to be, above all, a struggle for money, power and status. The key political question then becomes "who/whom" - meaning who is managing to assert themselves at the expense of whom.

If you accept this view, then yes we should all be Scandinavian type feminists. Motherhood isn't really about money or power or status, so it will be thought subordinate. And men, in taking the career role, will be thought to be deliberately oppressing women - they will be thought to be adopting the "who" side of the "who/whom" equation.

I think the modernist view doesn't really take into account the common goods that motivate most people.

My wife and I have a traditional marriage. The purpose of my going out to work is to make it possible for her to look after our children and home.

Neither of us really have much wealth, power or status. What motivates us is a happy home life; the raising of children; providing the next generation so that we successfully reproduce ourselves, our families and our tradition; and fulfiling our drives to be a father and a mother.

I don't see my wife as subordinate. As far as money goes, she has more disposable income than I do, despite the fact that she doesn't go out to work. She has share dividends, government family assistance and money from our parents. Given that I pay all the bills, she then gets to keep what she has for her own discretionary spending.

And it adds up to a bit of money. In just one week earlier this year she got about $8,500 from all sources (mostly from the government but a fair amount too from my father and her mother).

We see ourselves as working together for a common family purpose, but with distinct roles.

It's important in all this that I am able to play a masculine role. Once you're married there's a danger of slipping into a helper/companion role at the expense of a husband/lover one. And that will usually finish off the marriage.

So the fact that I can at times be the masculine provider by shouting the family a day out, or doing some of the outdoor work, or fixing things, or having some disciplinary authority as a father are critically important.

It's not a matter of women being subordinate, but of the man being someone the woman can admire and respect - society needs to help men to maintain this position in the family rather than reducing them to de-gendered helpers or aides.

"It's not a matter of women being subordinate, but of the man being someone the woman can admire and respect - society needs to help men to maintain this position in the family rather than reducing them to de-gendered helpers or aides."

I would agree with this. I think feminists too want this complementariness of the sexes, although they would probably not be willing to admit to it publicly. One thing is pretty clear though and that is that they despise weak men.

The ideal of living together in complementariness is the ideal of marriage. Does a women with a career necessarily imperil this though? Rather than many women becoming masculinated by their careers many careers are becoming increasingly feminised to accommodate women.

The modernist idea of power relationships is a bare bones stripped down take on life. Who's in charge becomes the overriding question. There is far more to life than that but doesn’t mean that these factors aren’t important.

On the issue with women being at home, its not an insight to say that left wingers don't value this as a legitimate choice or life for women. Are women at home "subordinate"? Well possibly not and they may be in charge. However, are women's opinions on political matters to be considered? Surely political matters and matters outside the home affect women too. Are women to have the final say on matters of disagreement or should men? Should women have a choice in accepting a stay at home marriage role? Or should they only be left a demeaned title of "spinster", which implies a failure to be marriable, if they do not. Also can women legitimately work outside the home and still be considered women? There are plenty of women who want to. All these questions must be considered too before an answer is given. If, however, men are called upon to make many of the most important questions in life for women and on behalf of women questions of inequality between the sexes come to the fore.

Whilst not being willing to admit that life should be all about power relationships I think its folly to ignore them. This comment is not meant to imply that there are easy answers here but only that there are various factors at play in marriages and in life between the sexes.

There has been discussion about women doing paid work from the home, is this so dramatically different from paid work outside of the home? One issue that it opens up is competition between men and women in the workforce. Competition need not be ghastly and I would say that ideas of "cutthroat" competition are not helpful to society if practiced between either men and women or only men.

On the issue of daycare I think its mistaken to think that children are so fragile that they needed to be cosseted or under the eye of their mother at all times. So some period of daycare for children does not necessarily concern me.

On the issue of paid maternity leave I would agree it is not sufficient in itself. A society that does not value the importance of children and childraising cannot be sufficiently paid to ensure children are born and brought up.

I agree with Anonymous that motherhood should be the priority for women and conversely domestic issues shouldn't be the priority for men. However, I don't think that a career necessarily leads to the exclusion of motherhood, although it certainly can.

I also don't think that women are genetically disposed to left wing concepts. If women are more interested in the left that's because the left may speak more to the reality of their lives. This is not, however, inevitable. Concepts of some freedom and control over your life, which is what the left does promise, whether it lives up to it or not is another matter, are human and not gendered desires.

On the issue of a parallel society this is of course everyone's right and can be influential. However, you don't want to surrender too much social ground. People's views are not entirely determined and they are open to opposing arguments and justifications. If people believe things its usually because they're based on reasons and presumptions, which means matters can be discussed and ideas can alter.

The problem with viewing the relationship between the sexes in terms of power is that this most assuredly completely messes up the core of that relationship.

How? Because this view encourages women to look at the relationship with their husband as one of relative power. Once that happens, it becomes a big struggle as to "who is in power" in the relationship. It sounds well to say "oh, there's no problem at all, power is shared" -- but that's generally bunk. Typically what is happening in those marriages is that the woman is in power, for a couple of reasons. The first is that, no matter what, the woman is pretty much *always* "in power" in the domestic realm -- whether she works outside the home, has a career or not. I'm in my mid-40s and I've known scores of professional married women and the number of them who truly have devolved the domestic power to their husbands can be counted on one hand ... and not taking up the whole hand, either. Women generally do not surrender that natural power base. So in these "shared power" marriages, what is happening is that (1) in the non-domestic realm decision making is by debate (usually also won by women in contemporary marriages ... for a book on that see "You Still Don't Understand") and (2) in the domestic realm, the woman controls and the husband assists at her direction. This = woman in charge of the marriage, full stop. And that will be the case in almost all marriages that follow this model, because women almost universally retain their power over the domestic realm and have no interest (perhaps it's biologically very difficult) to do so. Some of these marriages can still work if the man retains some sense of masculinity in terms of not being subordinated to his wife in the non-domestic realm, and maintaining a kind of sexual energy by not becoming her unpaid domestic assistant (regardless of the pat advice, no, it isn't a turn on for women when men are their domestic assistants).

So, in effect marriages based on "power sharing" are female controlled marriages. And that's because women are encouraged to view relationships with men as a power struggle, and to struggle with their man for power -- to vie for power, if you will.

This is, of course, the antithesis of Christian marriage, and in fact is a view of sex relations that makes Christian marriage virtually impossible. You can view the world as a big power struggle if you wish, but that has nothing in common with the Christian world view, and certainly not when applied to marriage. The Christian idea of marriage -- self-sacrificial love on the part of men and women alike -- is fundamentally at odds with a view that marriage is a power struggle, or that the quality of marriage relates to "power". The "submission" of women to men is sacrifice, as is the leadership of men, which is to be modeled on Christ. In both cases, it is "death to self" that is the key -- death to self-will for women, death to self-interest, for men. Notions of power and endless negotiation of relative power in a marriage are completely inconsistent with the Christian view of marriage.

People object and say that this is just a license for abuse -- but what that overlooks is that a husband who is abusive is obviously not following the Christian view of marriage, either, because he is not leading in a self-sacrificing way, but in a selfish and abusive one. In the same way, a woman who is insistent on asserting her "power" vis-a-vis her husband is also not following the Christian view, because she is not following in a self-sacrificial way -- instead she's asserting her own will, which is the opposite of sacrifice. Leading in a self-sacrificial way doesn't mean being weak or subservient to one's wife -- it means living for her, leading *for* her, and not for yourself. And the same holds true for women -- following in a self-sacrificial way does not mean "not having input" (women always have this), but means not expressing one's will in that way in a selfish or self-interested manner.

People object and say this is sexism -- why can't women be the ones in charge and men submit? I think you have the answer to that by looking around you. How many women really want to be in relationships with a man who submits to their authority openly? Not many. It isn't attractive to women -- male strength is. The Christian view of marriage simply takes this basic reality and shapes it into a self-sacrificial, mutually loving arrangement -- one where being the strong male leader means following Christ in self-sacrifice, and one where being the strong female follower means submission to one's husband, also as self-sacrifice. In this way the "preferred" strong (rather than weak) man arrangement is made into a Christian one, and is made a means not only of stable marital and family life, but of tremendous spiritual growth as well, if well and truly lived as advised.

So many Christians today do not follow this, because they also view marriage through the lens of power relationships, instead of realizing that in Christ all is made new, and that in Christ it is needless (and futile as well) to look at marital relations in terms of fallen human notions of relative personal power. But alas, the moral sickness of the age runs deep.

I had a refutation of Jesse7s first post line by line but my computer crashed...So I start over!! Keep in mind it's 3AM here in the US...

Paragraph ONE:

"The ideal of living together in complementariness is the ideal of marriage. Does a women with a career necessarily imperil this though? Rather than many women becoming masculinated by their careers many careers are becoming increasingly feminised to accommodate women. "

First off this is not the subject at hand. The subject at hand...Is pursuing a career leading to a drastic drop in the birthrate?

The point is that there is not enough TIME in the day to have a career and a successful marriage and raise 3-5 children.

I also think upon reading this paragraph that many women are still in classically female positions. There are hardly any female engineers. The only 'hard science' that is dominated by women are Research Biologists in Labs. Why I have no clue. Most other women are teachers, psychologists, humanities, english, social work, nursing---which is what they did before the 1960s.

At John Hopkins they have a special experimental program in which 2 female doctors share an office. Each works 3 days a week. It's a sweet job if you can get it. They probably work less than my egg business grandmother. BUT a Johns Hopkins experimental program does not a trend make. I have not seen such flexible schedules in Corporate Slave America. And I don't expect with the passing of Obamacare and a doctor shortage around the corner for these types of fun little Utopian experiments to be implemented everywhere.

Paragraph TWO:

"However, are women's opinions on political matters to be considered? Surely political matters and matters outside the home affect women too."

Oh my god! It's another I Love Lucy Episode! Is this the episode where the men talk politics and boxing and the women go to the kitchen? Well...I think Mark Richardson proved this point well enough in the Old Quaker Lady Post. Old Quaker Lady got some reforms passed through Congress in the 1830s. Hmmm....I guess women were listened to.

Furthermore, since your whole post is derived from the I Love Lucy series....Did you know who created that show? It was Lucille Ball. She got the idea, drafted it up, and pitched it to the network big wigs. I guess yet again...women were listened to.

(oh I know what your thinking right now...a few examples a trend does not make...but don't worry I'm getting to that at the end)_________NEXT!:

"Should women have a choice in accepting a stay at home marriage role? Or should they only be left a demeaned title of "spinster", which implies a failure to be marriable, if they do not."

Oh my gosh...We've moved from I Love Lucy to ..Gillian Anderson in House of Myrth! (Edith Wharton?) Yes!

Ok see...you do realize that books are written about events that are interesting. And events that are interesting tend to be events that rarely happen. So all those books about the poor woman Cast Out of Society you must realize were read by millions of 18th century women who said "Oh wow how horrible I would never treat her like that"

And really Spinsters? Cast Out? In a heavily Christian Society? With all the church involvement and such back in the day I feel that is just a historical lie. The spinster idea is more along the line of India with the caste system--the forgotten women I think they are called. Not anglo culture! Furthermore, doesn't Mark's Old Quaker Letter Writing Lady disprove the "spinsters were hated" in society idea?

"Also can women legitimately work outside the home and still be considered women? "

The vagina falls off?? Or Out?? Oh my gosh!! Well that must be a modern thing because Hester Bateman the famed English Silvermith from the 17th century husband didn't have a problem as they had several sons. _____

The point I'm trying to make Jesse is that people like Betty Goldstein rewrite history to make it sound REALLY REALLY Bad.

See...these liberal feminists tell all these stories about spinsters and stuff to say..

Look how awful women were treated in Traditional Christian Societies! Read "House of Myrth!" if you don't believe us! *GASP* Don't whatever you do go back to the Dark Ages! Instead...come to us...The Liberal Leftist Light! We'll liberate you! hehehehe *que the harp and angels*

This is what I take issues with. Hollywood has done an immensely wonderful job villainous our traditional society.

Now to address the "a few women a trend does not make" argument.

In every system there will always be unhappy women. Bibi, Hot Blondie, and in the past women of the 18th and 19th century.

BUT....the proof is in the pudding....when were our societies strong, proud, and GROWING?

Ahhh...back when traditional values espoused on this blog were triumphant. In other words the evil Traditional Christian filled Dark Ages!

When is our society in decline? Aha! Now when we have tried to cast off biology and pursue individual autonomy and 'happiness'. When we have ditched the traditional values of the past because Betty Friedan--the psychotic who no one who knew her in real life LIKED (read about her she was a massive bitch)...because Betty starts nitpicking our society pointing out all the flaws rewriting history and redefining success for women yadda yadda...

One more thing before I go to bed (3:34 AM!) I know there's a second post but I'm done...

I saw an ad for kitchen appliances from the 1950s where the wife is being spanked by the husband and the ad says "better buy these ladies". We also saw that on I Love Lucy.

My first reaction to the show and the ads are this:Now I really dislike that a lot. And why do I dislike the image of the husband spanking the wife? Well because I, raised in the lying school system and watching tons of movies, really believe that men did spank their wives.

But that doesn't make sense...for three reasons...

If men did actually spank their wives...why would that be shown on a comedy show created by a woman and why would there be a laugh track to it?

If men really did spank their wives...why would that image appeal to women so much that a kitchen appliance producer would use it to entice them to buy products?

Humor comes from something either being true or absurd. If men did spank their wives...I would assume it would not be funny. However, if the idea was 'absurd' then yes I could see how one could include such images in a comedy show or an add.

BUT...I still feel uneasy when I see the adds and that segment of I Love Lucy and I feel like it's because Feminists rewrote history so that I, the brainwashed generation, take the image literally.

Also can women legitimately work outside the home and still be considered women?

That's very Protestant of you, if I may point out. Catholics believe that marriage is a vocation that can be chosen. If a woman chooses it, then she is choosing the "whole package", including childbearing and homemaking. Those things come first, and it is only when those tasks are completed (or she receives some aid in completing them) that she should turn her attentions to other things.

However, she is free to choose a different vocation. Not every woman is cut out for marriage, but every woman who has married has duties and responsibilities to her family, and those take priority over all others. The same goes for men. A married man may not be able to accept the same types of employment as an unmarried one, because they are incompatible with being a husband and father.

Not everything need be about self-actualization. Sometimes you jut have to suck it up, and do what is best for your family.

There's a lot of talk about subordination/submission on here. I must say, as a woman, I am a bit insulted to read that submission is something that I should fear, or dread, or avoid. The question isn't whether a wife should be in submission to her husband (the Bible is perfectly clear on that: she should), the question is whether the role of wife is as important and valuable as that of the husband. It is.

Why should I dread being a wife? Why should I dread following my husband? If he is such a monster that I cannot stand to submit to him, than why do I stay in his house, eat his food, spend his money, and sleep in his bed? If he's so horrible, then perhaps it be best that I leave, rather than stay and live in contempt and disobedience, while enjoying his protection and provision.

It's a trade-off, you see. I think it is a fair trade, and I assume that God knew what He was doing when He set it up.

May I also note that men project a lot on the "submission issue". Whenever this topic comes up, it's usually the guys getting all worked up about it.

Most women aren't afraid of submission, they're afraid of submission to a weak or abusive man. Submitting to a strong, loving man is pretty much every woman's dream. That's the basic storyline in every romantic novel or movie, after all.

May I also point out that Roissy and his ilk are benefiting from women's need to submit. Sexual submission is the only "acceptable" outlet left. A more healthy/balanced submission in marriage is taboo, and relegated to fringe subgroups. But the urge remains.

I will admit that there is a strong focus on power/submission etc in my take. Christianity is however concerned with the question of sin. Power over another has the potential to open up all kinds of sinful and self justifying actions, indeed authority is one of the most taxing of challenges for the holder of it. It is not unchristian to be concerned about this. You also mentioned the possibility of leaving an unloving husband, I'm not sure if this is justified under many religious traditions.

On Anonymous’ point about I Love Lucy, this was a hugely successful sitcom about a housewife and merely showed how high a priority housewife status was afforded in the 50's and 60's. It was not meant to be taken as a literal exemplar of life at that time. I would agree that a busy career is probably incompatible with a large family but not with a small one.

On Novaseeker's point that the moment you start to negotiate with your wife you are submitting to her domination, I don't think that that necessarily follows.

Yes feminism does have the potential to open up the whole "sleeping with the enemy" argument and relations of trust and respect can become uncertain and controversial. However, there has been plenty of scorn on these pages directed towards women. Its not legitimate to say that this is all the fault of feminism. "If only she'd do what I want I'd love her" is a fairly tenuous basis for mutual regard.

On the question of submission its not an easy one. Some of the women I know who are the keenest to submit to a man are some of the pushiest. And when they do the demands made are many. Is it not easier to be more self satisfied with yourself and then you'll be less demanding of your partner? Surely stronger relationships are made that way?

An obvious counter to this argument is that people use this as a justification to never get married and we are all familiar with the marriage and birth rates.

On Novaseeker's point that the moment you start to negotiate with your wife you are submitting to her domination, I don't think that that necessarily follows.

It simply reflects the broader changes in the culture in a microcosmic way inside a marriage.

In the broader culture, women have demanded "equality" in the previously male space while granting nothing of the sort to men in the female space. Sure, they want men to "do more work around the house and with the kids", but that is not about ceding power, it's about procuring assistance. And in the culture as a whole, women are now ascendant, precisely because they now have a rough equality in the previously male space, while maintaining full dominance over the female space. In other words, they maintain full control of the female 50% and now have parity in the previously male 50%, meaning they have 75%. They are in control now. The Atlantic is not wrong when saying this, really.

This is the same in marriage. A marriage where the woman retains control over the domestic sphere (and this is virtually all marriages regardless of whether they are traditional or not), and has a parity/equality in the rest of it, is a marriage where the balance of power is in the wife's hands -- again, she has full control over the domestic 50% and parity in the other 50%, meaning she has 75% and the man has 25%. Note that this is the case regardless of how involved in parenting the man is, or how much he does around the house -- the key is that these are delegated tasks (often, as in the now nearly ubiquitous "Honey Do" lists) or are done in the clear context of the wife's supremacy in that sphere of the marriage and home life. Either way, the woman is in charge in these marriages. The only way to avoid that would be for the woman to cede her power over the domestic sphere -- and almost no women do that. Sure, a very small number do, but most do not because they do not want to. And men accept that because, unlike the upper middle class women like Friedan who were chomping at the bit to colonize the male space, men are generally not chomping at the bit to colonize the female space, and even if they were, women, with the supp support of social pressure, would fend that off pretty easily. So, the result in marriages is the same as in the culture: women are in charge.

This is avoided if you have a traditional marriage along Christian lines, as I describe above. But it must be pointed out that this is counter-cultural.

You're not wrong that men aren't chomping at the bit to colonise the domestic sphere. Although cooking is a somewhat increasing interest of men. Surely though any "victory" by women over men will be short lived? If they feel they're being sidelined men will withdraw from marriage, take up things like sport with greater interest or "roissy" like pursuits. It is perhaps a question of muscle, if you start to muscle your partner they will back away.

Also men will surely have an advantage in the sphere of work. Women by in large will still chose to withdraw or sideline their career to have children. In fields of work where results actually matter men still dominate and when fields become feminised, such as primary school teaching, this leads men to focus on other specialties.

I think you're right to emphasise that it's men who have to be concerned these days to hold their ground within a marriage.

When I think of the dozen or so married couples my wife and I know well, the situation in ten is healthy but there are two less functional marriages and in both of these it's the husband who is struggling to keep his place, not the wife.

The husbands in these two marriages are nice guys, but one is economically marginalised and not emotionally strong and the other is passive and inactive in his role within the home. The wife of the first husband treats him a bit cruelly in my opinion, making it clear to everyone that she keeps him on on sufferance and on her terms.

There's a strong contrast to the other marriages in which the wives seem content and respecting of their husbands. There's a big difference and it depends on the husbands being strong and effective in their roles.

It seems like this isn't about conservatism or liberalism but about what you want.

If you want 1 kid or 2 at most then yes. Marry the career woman. (But I think Australia versus American work ethics must be different because corporate America here I got home at 7pm at night and went to bed at 10ish did work in bed before sleep, so I could be at work at 8am) Pay the daycare fees for the one child, if you have no problem leaving your kid in daycare. If that works for you then just say "This works for me" and don't bother with any of the stuff we talk about here.

If you want 3-5 kids then you should probably discuss stay at home options with your wife. If you want some sort of education outside of public school to ocur with your children then a stay at home wife would be better as well.

My mom stayed at home with 1 child, but she also took care of sick grandparents (stroke, paralyzed) so it was a full time job for her--plus I was educated in school and out of school. I do think it made a difference for me academically.

This conversation is no longer about conservatism or christianity this is a "What does Jesse want in life?" conversation.

I do recommend though reading into a Christian Marriage.

Alte and novaseeker are probably the ones to talk on this subject....but I have perused this book...

"Power over another has the potential to open up all kinds of sinful and self justifying actions, indeed authority is one of the most taxing of challenges for the holder of it."

Thanks for getting to the heart of this discussion.

But let me ask you, what good thing can't be twisted into something evil? Should we ban good just to avoid evil?

Consider:

-Being masculine could make you sexist => no men?-Being devout could make you bigoted => no believers?-Valuing your people could make you racist => no peoples?-Being a father could make you a patriarch => no fathers?(just parents*, thanks).-Valuing the work it takes to make a buck could make you greedy => no profits?

and the list of verboten good things goes on an on.

Ever heard of the saying, "Guns don't kill people; people kill people"? Over here in the U.S., we coined that phrase as an answer to leftist busybodies who want our guns. They basically think about guns what you think about power: the little people can't be trusted with them.

There's a problem with their reasoning and yours, actually. If we little men can't be trusted with guns, with masculinity, with tradition, with a people, in short, if we can't be trusted with power, who exactly can be? Because, in the end, someone must have power. We can choose to keep it diffused, local and household oriented, and let individual families figure it out as they always have or we can invest it all in the hands of a few very powerful and usually, ironically, ueber masculine, men at the top.

So for fear of the abuse of power by little men, you're willing to invest it all in the hands of a few big men.

Huh.

Hahaha, well hey Jesse, it has been a while since we last sparred with a leftist on this board. Thanks for filling in ;)

*That's one thing I love about the German language: there's no all-purpose word for "parent". Germans usually say mother or father, depending on which they mean, or use the word for "parents" when they mean both. But their language doesn't really let them pretend that one parent is interchangeable with the other.

I don't think its enough to say what I as one person would like. I'd probably like to marry a career woman and have 2-3 kids. If its just a matter of choice that's fine, people should have the choice in this matter. The issue is I think feminists like to say there is only one legitimate choice and vice versa.

On the issue of time I agree it can be hectic. My mum was of the opinion that only one person can chase a full blown career. We'll see I suppose. It certainly does mean that taking care of sick relatives is no longer an achievable option.

Imagine trying to have a marriage with 3 kids, your wife commuting and working 8 hours a day, business trips, then you both coming home....where's the sex? do you guys work out or get fat? if the wife gets fat there's no sex..no sex means no marriage yada yada yada....

I dunnos mate....goodluck! The only career woman I know is that plastic surgeon from Perth. 6 kids and she specializes in burns. BUT she admitted that she had full time nannies for her children. So if you are comfortable with maids and nannies (which here in california is how we got the mexican problem and was kinda how the south africans got into trouble) then hey go for it!

Like for the record I consider a 'career woman' to be the Miranda type on Sex in the City--defense lawyer, full time doctor, corporate accountant etc etc. I think a school teacher or self-employed wedding planner (what a great job!) aren't quite the same as a 'corporate careerist.' So that's where I'm coming from. I think women should choose jobs to fit how they want children to be raised. Part time nurse doesn't count to me as a 'careerist.'

I agree in the modern or "postmodern" age we are more skeptical and aware of self justifying claims. This certainly has the potential to be paralyzing and can open the door to the princess and the pea phenomenon, everything isn't perfect so I can't sleep.

The alternative, however, of self justifying action can be obscene. "Seperate but equal" claims for maintaining segregation in the South, when equality is clearly not the intention. The "Dictatorship of the proletariat" belief when only dictatorship is meant. The potential for abuse of legitimate or other claims is almost endless and can only be prevented by reflection, clear headedness, a moral compass and knowledge that the human desire for power is endless.

One thing about power though is people may not realise its at issue. If you've been told that one way or the other is right and proper you may not realise that its at play. So you need some awareness I think as a starting point before you operate in it.

Basing a life on power relations is, from the Christian perspective, a quick road to hell. Of course, probably don't believe in "hell", but that's irrelevant. Because the kind of cynical paranoia that this worldview breeds is, in itself, a hall of its own creation.

You also mentioned the possibility of leaving an unloving husband, I'm not sure if this is justified under many religious traditions.

In the Catholic tradition, the woman is allowed to leave, but she is not allowed to divorce (and therefore, remarry). Remarriage (without an annulment) is considered adultery. But separation in order to protect herself or her children from abuse or severe neglect is absolutely allowed. In that case, the failure is the husbands, not the wife's.

Power over another has the potential to open up all kinds of sinful and self justifying actions, indeed authority is one of the most taxing of challenges for the holder of it.

Yeah. That's why it's not good to trust parents to dominate their children. They get up to all sorts of things and it's best to regulate all of that so that the children can be independent and self-actualizing. Our children are so much better off, now that they no longer live in submission to their fathers.

To be honest, Jesse, you are doing some major projection. Quit thinking that women will feel the same way about things as you do. They are women, not men, and are therefore inherently different in their thinking, because they are different in their needs, wants, and desires.

Women only mind submitting to psychos and chumps, otherwise it turns them on. Really. Actually, some women are turned by psychos, too. The reaction is instinctive.

Even having my husband order dinner for me, tell me which dress he prefers I wear, or make the final decision on the glass for our new door provides a thrill. We discuss most decision together, but he does have the final say. That is sexy, because it makes him look more powerful in my own eyes, and makes me feel safe in his protection. If I'm making most of the decisions, I feel like I'm ordering him about, and that turns me off. I want a strong man, not a servant or helper.

Domination = Attention

and women love attention. If a man can't even be bothered to decide where we are going out to eat, then I would think, "Why should I bother going out to eat with him?" If he -- on the other hand -- says, "We're going out to dinner tonight. I've already organized a babysitter. Put on that pretty red dress, and let's go eat Italian!", then I'm excited. I didn't even realize that I wanted Italian, but I'm all eager to go now. I'm eager to follow him. I'd be just as excited if he said Japanese or French. Doesn't really matter.

Women who don't live in submission to their husbands, tend to see their husbands as "just another child". That is why career women have the highest divorce rate, and the divorce rate sinks along with the number of hours worked. The more a woman is independent of her husband, the less she values him.

Women like to follow. Get over it, and stop trying to remake women in your own image. There's nothing wrong with our inner desires that needs to be fixed. God made us this way and He said it was good. He made us this way for a purpose. The purpose is marriage. There cannot be equal partners in a marriage. There is no tie-breaking vote in a partnership. Someone has to be designated leader, or there is bickering with every decision, or a string of compromises that make everyone miserable.

"If you've been told that one way or the other is right and proper you may not realise that [power is] at play. So you need some awareness I think as a starting point before you operate in it."

OK, do you mean that Person A is influencing the behavior or beliefs of Person B?

Well, yeah, that's the idea of human cooperation and society. If you reject that, you reject the idea of a society or civilization completely.

But maybe you don't want to end civilization ;), haha. You just want Person B to know what Person A is up to, right?

Maybe Person B ought to be suspicious of Person A, because A is up to no good. But then, why should B have anything to do with A in the first place?

I think that's what Alte was getting at: if you need to be "aware" of another person's power over you, it's because that person is abusing it. And if that person is abusing their power, you need to be more than just "aware" of it. You probably ought to just separate yourself from the person or get outside help.

Ah, and there's the rub, isn't it? That "outside help" these days is also known as the Left, and its members are always perfectly happy to pretend they aren't imperfect people like you but higher, more enlightened fairy godmothers that can make the meanies do what you want.

But, then, that's quite a bit of power too, right? The leftist State swoops down whenever it wants and forces you to, say, pay your cheating ex-wife $2000 a month in alimony...just because? Or they pry kids away from their parents because those parents are nasty racists or religious fanatics or whatever and the children "need" a "broader" (read leftist) view.

Yeah, that's a lot of power, too. And, anyway, if me and mine decide we want to separate from the Left, where do we apply?

"The point is that there is not enough TIME in the day to have a career and a successful marriage and raise 3-5 children."

That's right: We all have limits. Feminism is about pretending we don't.

Alte wrote,

"Women only mind submitting to psychos and chumps, otherwise it turns them on. Really. Actually, some women are turned by psychos, too. The reaction is instinctive."

Huh. Really? Are you talking about all women in general or traditional women? I can believe that traditional women get turned on by a manly husband--that just makes sense. But modern women too?

Haha, you know, when I was growing up (90's and early 2000's) the domination and submission idea was always treated like a dirty joke (ironic--so traditional sex roles are the new fodder for obscene jokes. Just like "parenthood" is in Huxley's Brave New World...). You joked as if women wanted to be dominated. But you knew that they really wouldn't go for submission and all that.

That's because they've been reduced to sexual roles, rather than complete marital roles. It's all about tying each other up and things now. Traditional sex roles are about sexual polarity in all things, leading to Complementarianism.

The truth is that people who are not asexual or homosexual tend to be attracted to the differences present in the opposite sex. Once the differences in the day-to-day life, appearance, and behavior of each spouse are rooted out, what is left? Only the differences in the bedroom, of course. So those become the focus.

But the differences are meant to be spread throughout the entire marriage, not just in the bedroom. Although they are based upon sexual differences (and often start there, during the courting and honeymoon phases), they should not be limited to them.

And -- yes -- very nearly all women are turned on by that. Non-traditional women will focus more on the polarity in the bedroom (which is the explanation for the rapid and astonishing advancement of anal sex, choking, polygamy, rape fantasies, and other extreme forms of submission), while traditional women like it spread around a bit more (if your husband completely rules your home, it feels exciting to do it missionary-style). But they all like it.

Women come in one basic model, that way. Women's need to submit has been suppressed dramatically since the rise of neo-feminism, and women's increasingly bizarre and depraved sexual appetites are the result. If sex is the only outlet, more and more will be required from it.

I will admit there is a bit of difference between the genders here. Women may like being told what to do in certain circumstances, I am generally less comfortable being told what to do by a women. However, men to a degree also like being told what to do. The ego is a powerful master and its so much easier sometimes to let that go and follow direction. Contrary to common perception in the Army most people and some of the strongest soldiers don't actually seek promotion and have to be placed in it or encouraged to take it on. That is because there is psychic pleasure in having fewer responsibilities and psychic stress in being responsible for others and being subject to greater accountability. Obviously there is the counter of people straining if they have too little power and simultaneously enjoying positions of responsibility.

If you genuinely care about someone be it a wife or fellow soldiers then they'll know that. Take the focus off yourself and focus on the other.

So for Alte's red dress example...telling your wife 'wear the red dress' isn't a command the subtext is 'I think you look good in this one' it's actually a complement. Or in a soldier setting 'We should do it this way' subtext being 'Because these are our strengths as a group and we won't get killed :)" See there's no power there it's about genuinely caring about the other person.

What does control over the domestic sphere involve? Can you give me some examples? Thanks.

Essentially it's maintaining the power and control over decision making pertaining to children and home life. Not actually changing the diapers, but making the decisions about the children, about the home and so on. In almost all marriages, regardless of whether Mom is "career Mom" or not, she leads in these areas. She may lead with his input, or she may simply not solicit or value his input, but the number of marriages where the man is the leader in these kinds of decisions is small. Most men go along with this, because they also think that their wives are "better at" or "more engaged in" these aspects of family life, again regardless of career roles outside the home. However, when that happens, and the rest of the marriage is the negotiated 50/50, she ends up having most of the power de facto, in the marriage overall. That becomes glaringly obvious when a divorce happens, for example.

Novaseeker:"Essentially it's maintaining the power and control over decision making pertaining to children and home life. Not actually changing the diapers, but making the decisions about the children, about the home and so on"

OK - I don't think my wife does this, but maybe she's not a very typical woman (she maybe has a rather laid-back 'male' attitude to housekeeping). Nothing other than her gardening gets done without mutual agreement.

I'm wondering how houses where the wife in control work - does the wife do everything without consulting the husband, or does she give orders and the husband carries them out?

I'm wondering how houses where the wife in control work - does the wife do everything without consulting the husband, or does she give orders and the husband carries them out?

It mostly happens in more subtle ways, at least at first.

The very common (in the US) "Honey Do" list is one form of it -- simply a list of tasks compiled by the wife that are to take up her husband's time on the weekend. It's not formulated in the form of a governmental decree, but it's an exercise of power all the same. And the interesting thing about "Honey Do" lists is that they are not collaboratively drawn up, typically -- they are unilaterally drawn up by the wife, to be completed by the husband to her satisfaction.

Other times it's the implied right of the woman to comment upon her husband's performance in domestic matters and "correct" him. This is similar to how a supervisor "corrects" a member of her staff, and is similarly an exercise in power. This can be over the dishes, or how the baby is being washed (or held), the "right way" to do homework with the children and on and on. Again, it isn't the passage of a law, but it's clearly an exercise of power over "her" domain.

What happens if the guy bucks this? Enforcement, of course. That comes in various forms, including verbal berating, increased criticism, taking tasks away (suggesting incompetence), withholding of affection, comparison to husbands of friends and so on -- mostly psychological means of encouraging compliance with her domestic regime.

Some women also take control by simply disregarding their husband's wishes and preferences.

If he likes long hair, she cuts it short. If he likes her in dresses, she wears pants. If he likes to eat meat, she cooks vegetarian. If he likes her thin, she stuffs her face with food. If he wants her to be thrifty, she spends $300 on a pair of shoes. Etc. It's a passive aggressive act and a blatant show of complete contempt. You only have contempt for someone you consider "beneath you", so such a display is a declaration of dominance. With these actions she's saying, "I don't care what you want because you are not important to me."

In fact, she'll actually start looking around for things to disagree with (as Novaseeker said). If he sets the table and puts the knife to the left of the fork, she'll move it to the right side and berate him for his "mistake". If she respected him, she'd just see the misplacement and shrug. She's making a big deal out of it in order to express her true feelings; to give voice to her disappointment and frustration. She's picking a fight to see if he'll "man up", or just keep putting up with it.

Or she'll spend 30 minutes nagging him about something. It doesn't really matter what. Nagging isn't about the specific topic, it's a chance for her to display her contempt for him. The reason why nagging, complaining, and disregard are described as "contemptuous" (even by women) is because women have a natural urge to be submissive. If she's not being submissive, it's because she thinks he's not worth submitting to. She's refusing submission to make a point about what a chump he is.

Most of the married women I know do this sometimes, often without premeditation; tests of her husband's dominance. If he lets her get away with it, her contempt merely grows, and she increasingly despairs at the schmuck she married. It's a vicious cycle. She may not divorce him, but she'll "stop loving him", dread going to bed with him, and constantly moan about her lot in life.

Most women don't mind working hard, or even suffering, for a man they admire. They're part of the team, following their captain, doing their duty. It's what brings them the greatest happiness in life, and it drives their reproductive urges.

But lifting a single pinky-finger for a schmuck is pure torture. Most women would rather be alone, than saddled with such a man. That's why most women who divorce are happier afterward, even if they are subsequently alone and poorer than before. Rather alone with cats than living with a schmuck. That is why the women in this article don't marry, you know. They'd rather be alone than stuck lying under a schmuck. The very thought of that makes their skin crawl. Eggs are precious. If they do marry such a man, they keep him on a short leash and try to limit sex as much as possible.

I know that Christianity teaches that a woman should be respectful and obedient regardless of whether or not her husband is a chump. But even Christian wives struggle with this, because it goes against our instincts. A Christian man can make his wife's life much easier if he doesn't act like a chump. Why torture her unnecessarily?

Some of these men say "She should love me anyway, despite my lack of leadership." This is true. Just as you should love her even if she weighs 300 lbs and spends all day watching soap operas and eating cupcakes. But it would be a heck of a lot easier to love her if she lost some weight, wouldn't it? A willingness to improve oneself for the other's benefit is a show of love, in itself.

If you look at the character played by Elizabeth Taylor in "Who's afraid of Virginia Wolfe?", she's so aggressive and so berating its hard to imagine she could ever be happy with any man. Elizabeth's complaint is that the man isn't strong enough, or at least not strong enough for her. But rather than leave she makes his life utter hell. Did Elizabeth Taylor ever remain successfully married by the way?

Thanks Novaseeker - this doesn't bear any resemblance to my domestic life, if anything I'm the more 'naggy' one (something I have to watch out for).

If I was going to do a weekend list of chores I'd expect my wife to be doing a similar list. In reality we talk about what needs doing and if we get around to doing it at all, it's usually done together. Friction only comes if one of us feels the other isn't pulling his/her weight.

Trust me, if you look carefully, the regular-not-filthy-rich older men dating the younger women have usually left the places where the women of their age cohort came from. This is because these women know they have no chance with the good men who have their eyes open, so they'll try to poison the younger women by speaking lies about the older man (David Buus has it right). Further, the situation where rape and sex harassment allegations can be made so easily and in cases, falsely, poisons the well even further.You go girl... into a cattery!